Touhou Kanjuden (Ultramarine Orb Tale) ~ Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom (東方紺珠伝 ～ Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom)[1] is the fifteenth official installment of the Touhou Project. It was announced by ZUN on his personal blog on April 22, 2015, at 20:57 JST.[2] A playable demo was released in May 10, 2015, at Reitaisai 12.

Contents

Gameplay

There are four playable characters: Reimu Hakurei, Marisa Kirisame, Sanae Kochiya, and Reisen Udongein Inaba. Before release, ZUN noted big changes to the gameplay, which would be "very different" (though still retaining core shoot 'em up fundamentals). He also made mention of the challenge and difficulty in implementing these changes, especially in time for the demo's release. [2]

Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom allows a selection between game modes: "Legacy Mode", which functions similarly to previous Touhou Project titles, and "Pointdevice Mode", a gameplay mode that removes lives and continues from the game but adds chapter checkpoints. When the player is hit in Pointdevice Mode, the game reverts back to the state at the beginning of the current chapter with only a small penalty to power. Additionally, after choosing difficulty and character from the menu, Pointdevice Mode grants the option to resume the previous game session.

Grazing is notably changed from previous titles, slowing the fall of point items so long as the player continues to graze. Prolonged grazing of bullets grants an additional 5 graze points. Graze becomes very important as players may be awarded a life fragment (in Legacy Mode) or a bomb fragment (in Pointdevice Mode) at the end of each chapter depending on how many graze points were earned and how many enemies were defeated.

Concept

Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom's PointDevice Mode takes inspiration from game such as I Wanna Be The Guy[3], where the player can respawn from checkpoints each time the player dies. Because games that were similar to I Wanna Be The Guy kept appearing and it was started to become somewhat of a genre, ZUN wanted to try out something similar. He also noted that the reason he came up with the concept of the Ultramarine Orb Elixir was because he wondered why those types of games never gave a reason for as to why the player character was allowed to respawn at the beginning after each death.

Story

Someone is causing havoc in the Lunar Capital, and evidently, Lunarians have come to purify Gensokyo to make it suitable for them to live there (as they have a thing against what they consider "impurity"). With the help of the Ultramarine Orb Elixir (or not), the girls must now set out to stop this invasion and find the perpetrator behind this incident.

Music

Interestingly, ZUN has been using less and less English subtitles in song names each game, but Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom is the first game in the series to not have an English subtitle for any song.

Press

Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom was first announced on ZUN's blog on April 22, 2015. He confirmed playable characters and posted in-development screenshots, along with making vague mention of gameplay and story, the latter of which would remain a secret. Of the gameplay, he noted the difficulty of implementing it in time for the demo release at Reitaisai 12, which he would work on until then and would be released on CD-R.

External Links

Notes

↑The Ultramarine Orb (紺珠,Kanju) is a gem said to belong to Zhang Yue, a prime minister of China's Tang dynasty. When he forgot something, he would hold the gem in his hand, and be able to remember everything.